Testing Tools Spark Software Development at Japanese Electric Corporation

"Mitsubishi" means "three diamonds" in Japanese, but the name Mitsubishi has come to mean products of every description. Mitsubishi's more than 40 major companies make everything from cars and steel to chemicals, clothing, consumer electronics, textiles and power plants.

The three-diamond logo represents (1) corporate responsibility to society, (2) integrity and fairness, and (3) international understanding through trade. The logo symbolizes quality and reliability in products and services, and preserving this reputation is a top priority at all Mitsubishi companies.

Mitsubishi Electric puts quality first at its Power & Industrial Systems Center, in Kobe and Nagasaki, Japan. The center is responsible for developing systems that control and monitor thermal, hydroelectric and nuclear power plants, water supply and drainage plants, and transportation.

To ensure that their generators, motors and other heavy-duty electrical equipment are functioning at peak performance, Mitsubishi Electric's software development team places great importance on using high-quality software. The team is careful about selecting the most reliable test-debugging tools they can find for distribution throughout the Power & Industrial Systems Center.

"We purchased BoundsChecker in 1997, then SmartCheck in 1998," says Shigehiko Matsuda, chief of software production technology, Development Department, Power & Industrial Systems Center. "We chose these products due to their high market share and reputation."

BoundsChecker and SmartCheck belong to the NuMega DevPartner Studio product suite, a suite of tools permitting developers to easily and quickly detect and resolve errors, optimize performance and locate untested code.

"Improving software quality and reliability is very important to us to facilitate productivity. If a delivery deadline is not met, our software development team would lose its reputation," says Matsuda.

Standardizing Development Processes

When the use of C as a development language increased a few years ago, the software development team realized they could no longer develop all of the analysis tools needed to resolve C-specific problems. The Power & Industrial Systems Center changed its policy to allow the use of third-party software packages within the organization, sparking the need to standardize development procedures at the center.

When it came to configuration of programs and start-up methods, the standardization assignment seemed overwhelming. Each department had a different system. The software development team began by focusing on the testing process, which was the easiest to standardize.

Achieving Maximum Results

When the team approached management about implementing testing tools, there were fears the tools would only increase the number of development processes. However, when the team presented results of tested and untested cases, management immediately realized the tools' advantages.

At first, engineers were also resistant to using the testing tools because they were accustomed to programming freely. Matsuda and his team worked hard to explain the necessity for standardization, and it wasn't long before each of the Power & Industrial Systems Center's departments realized the benefits from the NuMega DevPartner products. In tests, they detected runtime errors that conventional tools could not detect.

"Hardware products are thoroughly checked to meet Japanese industrial standards," says Matsuda. "Therefore, standardization of software quality control was also crucial for us."

Preventing Memory Leaks

The Power & Industrial Systems Center's software development team uses BoundsChecker and SmartCheck for unit testing, to detect possible faults before implementing full-scale tests. BoundsChecker automatically pinpoints memory leaks, allowing managers to spend more time focusing on their work and less time deciphering problems.

"These tools have been firmly established in our department, and they have helped raise our team's overall quality of engineering," says Matsuda.

Fostering Quality, Reliability

Over the years, Mitsubishi Electric's Power & Industrial Systems Center has enjoyed the benefits gained from using NuMega DevPartner Studio products. The software development team has relied on BoundsChecker and SmartCheck to improve software quality by detecting and diagnosing errors. Since Visual Basic is the vital language for streamlining, the Power & Industrial Systems Center foresees implementing additional DevPartner tools in the near future.

Mitsubishi Electric is confident that NuMega DevPartner Studio products will continue to contribute to the company's overall productivity in software development and, consequently, in manufacturing for years to come.